Tabitha Stanmore / The Conversation Chances are that when you hear the words “ medieval magic ”, the image of a witch will spring to mind: wizened old crones huddled over a cauldron containing...
Ever since the days when magic first arose, people have been looking to manipulate the world with supernatural means and divine intervention – often for positive ends, but also to punish or send...
A shocking story from India is showing that in some areas of the world old superstitions are still alive and leading to terrible crimes. The belief in witchcraft is still common in many areas of...
Luck is a way of understanding or judging how chance events affect our lives. Chance may be a mixed bag of marshmallows and razor blades, a flowing river of good and bad experiences; positive,...
Among all the perils that the ancient Egyptians battled through their use of religion and magic, none came close to the poignant and desperate prayers they made to save the lives of their offspring...
Family came first in ancient Egypt. Be it the royal household or the commoner on the street, the bond between parents and their children was considered sacred. Right through the Old Kingdom period...
Frogs and toads played a wide variety of roles in ancient cultures. Although there are some differences, they generally represented female creation energy. Frogs appear in ancient stories, myths,...
Scientists are demanding Kyrgyzstan’s only mummy be taken out from the spot in which it has recently been reburied. The 1,500-year-old relic was taken from a museum and quietly buried on the eve of a...
Thanks to Bram Stoker’s Gothic horror novel Dracula, many people associate vampires with the region of Transylvania in Romania. However, it was only around 25 years ago that anti-vampire rituals...
Today, August 21, America will darken under the path of a total solar eclipse. This rare and spectacular astronomical alignment, when the Moon appears to completely cover the sun, shadowing the...
For the first time, researchers have found evidence in a belief in the walking dead in medieval England, where they analyzed bones and skeletons that were decapitated, burned, and otherwise mutilated...
Though it may seem as if Halloween is a modern con trick designed to get us spending our hard-earned cash on an American celebration, this is not the case. In fact, dressing up, knocking on neighbors...
Recently, reports of a Thai doll craze have been featured at the end of news hours, a spot typically reserved for pop culture tidbits like hijab wearing Barbies (“hijarbies”) or the birthday of the...
The only total solar eclipse of 2016 is set to darken the skies over Indonesia. Visible largely across the archipelago, this rare natural phenomenon will happen on the morning of March 9 and is...
The history of criminal justice and forensic science is really interesting because of all the absurd rituals and superstitions courts relied on to determine guilt or innocence right up until the 19th...
The remains of a teenage girl from medieval times given a witch burial in which she was placed face-down in a deep tomb is believed to have had scurvy that disfigured her body, causing her community...
A solar eclipse is set to darken the sky over Europe, as well as parts of Asia, North West Africa, and North America in the biggest eclipse since 1999. Expected to plunge some countries into 98...
1. According to the Hittites, if a child were to be born in the first month, he will demolish his house. The Hittite collection of omens is said to be derived entirely form the Mesopotamian tradition...
